Feature: Top Freeware Shoot ’em Ups 2010

[From now until mid-January, IndieGames.com: The Weblog will be counting down the best independent and freeware games of 2010, with descriptions, screenshots, and links of the best games in each major category. Previously: Top 10 Experimental Games]
The second of our in-depth 2010 Best Of Features here on the IndieGames.com blog (after the overall Top 10 we did for Gamasutra and the 10 Indie Games for ’11 article), we’re proud to present ten of the best freeware shoot ’em ups released in 2010.
There’s no denying that Locomalito’s long-awaited horizontal shooter Hydorah overshadowed the release of all other shoot ’em ups, but luckily enough we’re here to brief everyone about some of the more notable games to feature space pilots going up against impossible odds.
Here are the top freeware shoot ’em ups of the year:

10. Action Escape Kitty (Melly) [Flash, freeware] Action Escape Kitty is a tough side-scrolling shmup. There is no end to the game – rather, you keep on blasting and surviving for as long as possible. The different formations of enemies appear in a random order, so no two playthroughs are the same.

9. Destroy the Brain (Anglia Ruskin University Team) [Unity, freeware] Destroy the Brain is exactly the type of game you want to wake up to on a Monday morning – a quick and clever arena-style shooter that sees you removing parts from the spinning mass in an attempt to get as close as possible to the brain and destroy it.
The game was created by a group of students at the Anglia Ruskin University during a 24-hour gamejam. Guns fire back at you, but you can’t die – hence, they’re meant as more of a hinderance to stop you from accomplishing your goal. The idea is to blow up the brain in the centre as fast as possible. Go give it a play, it’s a lot more tactical than it sounds.

8. memrrtiks, suashem (Terry Cavanagh) [Flash, freeware]memrrtiks, suashem is a score-based shooter that plays rather similarly to Terry’s other game, Bullet Time. The objective here is to survive for as long as you can while shooting at ghost-like enemies for points. Every time your current score passes the last high score you’ve achieved, a running number will flash in the middle of the screen as an attempt to prevent you from scoring too much in one game.

7. Steel Storm (Kot-in-Action Creative Artel) [Windows/Mac/Linux, freeware]Steel Storm is a top-down space shooter with both a single-player campaign and a full multiplayer deathmatch mode. Through a series of missions, you zip around shooting down enemy ships and turrets, and grabbing every collectible you can find. The game is worth grabbing for the single-player alone, so go give it a download.

6. Radial Plus (Spatial) [Windows, freeware]Radial Plus is a lovingly-polished space shooter with a twist – you can’t shoot directly an enemies, but instead you must bounce your shots off a wall and into them. It’s a great little journey, made all the better by the high quality visuals – it may be a game made entirely of simple coloured blocks and backgrounds, but there are some lovely effects on show.

5. Chaos Invaders (Bit Battalion) [Flash, freeware]Chaos Invaders is an utterly mental take on the classic shooter, in which dead enemies can be used as weapons. Shoot an invader down and catch them on your ship, then launch them back at the remaining baddies. There’s plenty of variety to be found, with boss battles that fall apart as you fight them, levels baseds around simply catching falling aliens, and strong barriers than need to be blasted apart with aliens rather than your normal fire. All good fun, with great music too.

4. Invaders: Corruption (Manuel van Dyck) [Windows/Mac, freeware]
Nearly everything you see in Invaders: Corruption is procedurally generated, from the main ship to the baddies to the way the baddies move to the backdrops. When you begin the game, you’re asked to enter a word – this word determines what your ship will look like. Bad guys spawn all over the screen, and will act differently depending on the characteristics they’ve been given – some may clump together and hide in the corner of the screen, while others will spawn and immediately surge towards you.
The first minute of play is a little dull, as you’re given the bare minimum abilities and don’t feel all that powerful. However, once the pick-ups start appearing and the intensity ramps up, it’s really great fun. There are online leaderboards to climb too.
Make sure you check this one out – download from the Invaders site for both PC and Mac.

3. Bat Country (Greg Sergeant) [Flash, freeware]Bat Country is a horizontal-scrolling shooter with four levels to play through, featuring silhouette graphics and imaginative enemy designs that’ll keep you on your toes from start to end. The story is about a pilot named Thompson who must fly deep into enemy territory to rescue a group of stranded soldiers, even when the odds heavily stacked against him and his copter is well and truly under-equipped for such a mission.
The bombs that you carry on your ship can be thrown one at a time using the space key, and once they are close to your intended target you can press the same button again to detonate them and cause some serious damage. Mastery of the bomb detonation skill is essential if you’re planning to survive past the second area, since the difficulty ramps up quite a bit when bigger and badder enemies are introduced into the equation.

2. Boss Rush (Paper Dino Software) [Flash, freeware]Boss Rush turns the tables on regular shmups, by putting you in control of the enemy. The huge, over-powered earth-shattering enemy.
Regular bullets can be fired by clicking, while stupidly powerful lazers and spinny things of death can be launched via the 1-4 buttons. Surprisingly, the ‘good guy’ does a really spectacular job of dodging everything you throw at him and destroying your ship bit by bit. Unfortunately for him, as he knocks parts of your ship off, you lose weapons… and gain even more powerful blasters. Of course, if he completely takes you down it’s game over, but you’ll find that doesn’t happen much until later laters.
Why is being the bad guy always so much fun? Go wreak havoc at BossRushGame.com.

1. Hydorah (Locomalito) [Windows, freeware]Hydorah is a Gradius-style horizontal shooter that features sixteen different levels to beat, a wide variety of weapons to unlock, and a handful of secrets that can only be found by space pilots who dare travel off the beaten path. There is a progress save option that’ll come in handy for practicing and mastering difficult stages, although players aren’t allowed to use it more than three times during the entire mission.
The lack of a difficulty setting is going to irk some players, but shmup fans who had been yearning for a decent 2D side-scrolling shooter will be more than delighted with this gem of a game.[Got feedback? Reasons to disagree? Post a response and we’ll do a special ‘best of reader comments’ round-up at the end of our chart countdowns.]

Why is “memrrtiks, suashem” on the list? It looks and feels like a damaged atari 2600 console, like its name accidentally hacked into the keyboard and could just win the prize for ugliness. I’ll never understand why in times of 1gb graphic cards and surround sound this type of graphics/sound will be created. At that time all pc users looked yearningly to the beautiful graphics and sound capabilities of the amiga – why glorify now that ugly 486-crap?

You’re right, Tim. Hydorah set the standard pretty high for shoot’em ups.
I’ve played some of these other games, or watched friends playing, and none come close to the obvious care and dedication given to Hydorah.

Hydorah on the first place? I dont know… The game has a real nice feeling – for the first three minutes. It could be real fun but it sucks very fast horrible cause of two things: first, the control freezes while pressing the fire button and a direction simultaneous. I have to release ‘fire’ to move the ship. Bang, i’m dead. Second, i’m dead anyways after one minute because only one life and no health bar. I know, thats the old school thing, but it SUCKS!!! Restart a level over and over and over after getting one single hit is absolutely boring and lets me trigger the remove-game-from-harddisk-finger very quickly …if i could find the uninstall entry in the control panel. Where is it?

Eightbitnoo~, that control problem is most likely caused by your keyboard. Try using other keys or a gamepad, that should sove it.
As regards difficulty, yeah, Hydorah is a beast. But, even though I don’t usually like (or am able to endure) brutally difficult games, I just loved mastering this one.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that you won’t finish it in just one go, you may have to restart it a few times, learning it. At first you will probably save after each level, thus you will run out of saves quickly. That’s okay. But, once you’ve become sufficiently good at the first 2 levels, you should try beating both in one go, and only save after level 2 – and already you have an additional save and can progress further than before, while you will also have become better at the game in general.
At least that’s how I did it. It was a vastly different experience from most modern games I usually play, but that was also part of why I loved it so much.

I found Hydorah to be too difficult as well. I would have liked to experience more of the game.
My favorite shooter was Hero Core, but I guess it doesn’t quite fit into the shmup category. I was able to beat the 3 difficulty levels of Hero Core.
I prefer having more save points or shorter levels.

I think the real question is have YOU ever heard of 2010? It’s the year in question for this list, please take note of that.
So if you want to mention some Eastern games then mention Crimzon Clover, RepLiser, Aclla, Beat Barrage, Hayabusa, and so on.
The list is disappointing but even including the rest of the world it’s been a pretty slow year for Shmups.

Hydorah was a beautiful, fantastic game. Just too difficult to be appreciated by me. Makes me realise just how easy our games these days are.
Thanks for the summary, I didn’t see boss rush. Really enjoyed a game which tries something new and cool.

Yea I too think it would of been nice to see some japanese shooters although those that have just been listed arnt freeware unless you use mediafire. Still I bet if I visited that vector site I could find some 2010 free Japanese shooters that piss over most of whats in this list (although western shmups are getting better though)
As for those moaning about hydorah been hard just need to man up and learn2play

Dammit, what is with the moaning about difficulty? I thought this was a community of gamers, people that appreciate the beauty of a game that challenges you? If the game doesn’t provide resistance, then you never learn how to play it, and if you DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO PLAY IT, how can you appreciate it?
“man up and learn2play”, as T put it. From what I can tell, it’s quite an great game, one of the best I have ever seen posted on this site.

Dammit, what is with the moaning about difficulty? I thought this was a community of gamers, people that appreciate the beauty of a game that challenges you? If the game doesn’t provide resistance, then you never learn how to play it, and if you DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO PLAY IT, how can you appreciate it?
“man up and learn2play”, as T put it. From what I can tell, it’s quite an great game, one of the best I have ever seen posted on this site.

@ sam I think most western gamers arnt really into difficult games that require replaying a stage or a section untill they have aquired the skill to beat it. Thats why verts and horizontals are still quite niche and the twinstick arena shmup with no stages in them are more popular. Tis a shame though

>>”man up and learn2play”
Yeah, you’re the best at shmupping, your mom is proud of you, and we all secretly with we were you because you succeeded at playing games. Still, I’d like to see more of that game and because I’m only average, I can’t, unless I quit my job & devote my life to playing a single game.
And don’t deny that it’s for your ego only, because if YOU wanted a challenge, you’d just be happy with a game that offered various difficulty modes. But no, you don’t want the game to be difficult, you want the game NOT easy for ANYONE, because of those voices in your head that say that everyone knows that you’ve beaten the game & how great you are. But let me clear things up for you: the few people who know about your existence don’t care about you BEATING A GAME.
Anyway, the best shmup in the history of shmups, Xenon 2, proved that a shmup (yes, even in the late 80’s!) didn’t need to be japanese-difficult-with bullet-labyrinth-hell to be enjoyable.

Lol I love mr anonymous and his anti learn2play rant. Where the hell does ego come into it? it seems that its you with voices in your head mate. What it is about is the thrill of over comming a challenge while having fun playing the game at the same time.
Im nowhere near the best shmup player in the world but I get by, and so can anyother player if they actually could be bothered trying and it doenst require you to quit your job, many ppl are ok with just 30 – 60 mins every day for 1- 6 weeks which is enough to beat many shooters which equals about the same as other genres like a RPG.
You and me are just different types of gamers, especially as you think Xenon 2 is great, I had it back in the day and its one of the most crappiest shmups ive played (ship is too slow)

>>>as you think Xenon 2 is great, I had it back in the day and its one of the most crappiest shmups ive played (ship is too slow)
The very first powerup you get, like after 10 seconds of playing, is a speedup one, noob! Watch it on Youtube & tell me if the ship is too slow..

Hydorah is an absolute gem.
It has been a long time since a game has captivated me like this one has.
I disagree with the people that complain about the difficulty. Hydorah is hard, but fair.
This is my first afternoon playing the game and I am on the 6th stage. It’s not THAT difficult 🙂

Hydorah is a top Game! I finished it in 2 Weeks, it wasn’t to hard for me! It has a nice difficult, and if you end the game, it gives a little surprised (find all bonus secrets and more)… 🙂
many regards, Champ